


A Wait of Four Hundred Years

by estike



Category: Nobunaga - Takarazuka Revue, 信長・下天の夢
Genre: M/M, Modern AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 03:57:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17093585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/estike/pseuds/estike
Summary: Conman, rascal, villain. Roltes is so used to being the one who seduces others, he does not recognize being seduced.





	A Wait of Four Hundred Years

**Author's Note:**

> (Very loosely) based on the Takarazuka musical. 
> 
> My sincerest apologies to any historical characters whose fictionalized personas are involved in this.
> 
> A slightly revised version of an old story, close to my heart.

When Organtino tells him he is going to Japan, he simply does not believe him at first. His friend is persistent, of course. When he wanted to go on an exchange program in India during their undergraduate years, he pursued it. With such determination that Roltes somehow ended up following him too.

(It was for the better, he met one of the greatest opportunities in Goa, he couldn’t have had anywhere else. And yet. It was tedious.)

He tells him it is not going to work because that is what supportive friends do. Destroy your happiness and undermine your precious plans you carefully brought up warming them to your chest. Especially when you are about to leave them behind for a year to go and watch unsubtitled anime on the other side of the world.

Even if you could, theoretically, understand quite some of that anime with your undergraduate Japanese minor.

“There is a Catholic mission,” Organtino explains to him. “That receives volunteers. It’s perfect. In Kobe.”

“There is nothing in Kobe,” Roltes says immediately. “Nothing but assorted foreigners and beef.”

“ _What_!”

Organtino can deny as much as he likes, it will not change the facts. In Kobe there are only old European style houses a few beef restaurants and expensive jazz bars. There is, of course, that sort of smoky, sultry feeling to those, with the saxophone in the background and the raspy voice of some woman, singing in the weird mixture of English and Japanese. Surely, but if he wanted to relive the European experience, he could do that right on the corner of the street they live in.

“Why not Ōsaka? That _is_ a city.”

“It is close enough. You can even commute. And besides… the church in Kobe is very pretty. Modern.”

“Of course it is modern. What do you expect from a country that used to crucify its Christian missionaries in the sixteenth century?”

Roltes is absolutely not touched. In fact, he cannot explain it but hates the idea already. Why is it so that Organtino always has to make something up and leave him?

“That was four hundred years ago… And they were not even the first to do it. Come on. You could get a working visa and come with me.”

“To the mission? Organtino.”

“To work, or something. A handsome man like you could teach all the girls English for a high price. And who knows, you might end up with a Japanese wife…”

Roltes looks at him as if he completely lost his mind. The last goddamn thing he wants… He takes a breath.

“Organtino,” he says, carefully enunciating his name. “The Catholic mission idea is the worst I’ve heard so far.”

He ends up applying for the working visa because there is no way Organtino will go alone to a Japanese Catholic church (in Kobe!) to watch anime on authentic Japanese television. No way. And besides, Organtino was not entirely wrong. There are lots of wealthy men and women in that country, looking for someone to turn their world upside down and most of all, to swindle them out of their money at the very end. And Roltes just knows the man for that.

 

Organtino holds his hand on the aeroplane. (For twelve… long… hours…) He is unsure how the man even manages to eat his food with only one hand – but he does. Organtino feeds him with his own dessert because he cannot finish it alone, and he would not have mercy on him, even when he begs.

“Organtino, please. People are looking.”

“So?”

When he falls asleep, Roltes does not have the heart to release his hand and watches him dream. He better be seeing the hills of Kobe, he thinks to himself, and absent-mindedly rubs Organtino’s palm.

Jet lag then plagues them for a few days. Roltes has his own little room in a share house close-by the church. (It truly looks modern, but it is by no means pretty or unique, he thinks.) They fall asleep next to one another on Roltes’s single bed on one particularly lazy afternoon. Seeing some strange dream, Organtino whimpers in his arms and that is what wakes him up. He caresses his face because, with the curtains drawn, nobody could see them.

 

On the first weekend, he goes to Ōsaka alone. Kobe is not a particularly small city, but it looks like that vicious small town where everyone knows everyone too well, and gossip silently following him wherever he goes. If he was to talk to a girl on the Hankyu line, people, at least along that line would know from Nishinomiya to Takarazuka. That is not ideal for what he does. Well, he teaches, on paper. Recognisability is a plus _there_.

Ōsaka on the other hand? Unless you talk suburbs, you were never destined to pass by the people who you meet on public transport or under the charming, roofed shopping streets. Which is exactly what he is looking for. He likes to be anonymous.

Organtino is right. His pronounced, crooked nose and the curly hair will only draw attention to him. He is, so to say “unique” around here. And he can use that. He will use that.

He will use that, but at the same time he will use the size of the city as well for his own means, knowing that he can walk around on the streets as a faceless, nameless foreigner, no matter how many times he comes back.

The plan is very easy. Find an impressionable, conveniently wealthy-looking young lady. Charm her. Lightly allude to marriage. Cheat her out of her parents’ money. Repeat.

The plan is _very_ easy. And yes, he crosses it before he could even get started with it. The train carriage fills with high school students in their white shirt and plaid bottom. They should clear out soon: they will clear out soon and then he can finally see whether he could settle on someone today.

But he settles on someone even before the high school students would move. The only problem? It is by no means an impressionable, wealthy-looking young woman.

He sits on the farthest side of the carriage, next to the railing, with his head slightly bobbed, not even trying to fight his fatigue. It is difficult to make out his features under the thick black (permed?) curls. He has a single light brown streak starting from his temple, which looks almost natural to Roltes. He does not look stunning… he does not look beautiful. Not even rich. There is no outright, visible reason why he should steal Roltes’s attention. He is hugging his bag to himself and when the next station (Ōsaka Castle) is announced, he jumps off of the train as if he was never sleeping in the first place and Roltes needs to decide quickly.

He pursues it. Using the masses who get off at the same stop, he slips the wallet out of the side pocket of the bag during an unguarded moment. He quickly hopes to check his papers, evaluate his situation, the merit in trying his luck with this man. To his disappointment, he only finds a few banknotes inside, a blue _ICOCA_ pass _,_ nothing more personal.

Roltes sighs and catches up with him at the ticket counters where he calmly looks for his card. He is deep in his own pockets with both hands, surely thinking that he put the pass somewhere there.

“I think you’ve dropped this on the home platform,” Roltes says, gently hitting his shoulder with the wallet from behind.

The man only slightly turns, and then says “ah!” in his surprise.

“But you’re a foreigner!” is what he concludes. “Your Japanese is very good.”

This gains him a cackle. They always say that, and it gets very repetitive, boring. He wonders if he should have just taken the wallet as it was and called it a day. (But he never settles for a single wallet.) What else could this thin, short man offer him, in a stupid, silky blue shirt and even more stupid, sturdy buckle boots? Probably nothing.

“You say that too early. What will you say when you learn what exactly I am capable of? People over here keep saying this, and way too early too. It is transparent.” 

The man produces some sort of a smile, though on his face it rather looks like a grimace. He has huge, black eyes, with way too much depth to them. He stares at his own reflection in them. Roltes should not waste his own time here.

“We are a country of integrity,” the man tells him. “Integrity is about accommodating others, foreigners or not. Of course, we will compliment your Japanese ability. Even if you only know two words with pathetic pronunciation. Are you a man of integrity? Sure you are, when you need it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have returned my wallet. And besides… It is not like I can speak a single word of English.”

Roltes rolls his eyes. There are more than Americans and British to the world. Before he could even complain, the man nods and smoothly continues.

“Or _your_ mother tongue, for example.” He flicks through his banknotes. “Let me buy you something now that you reunited me with my wallet. I am indebted.”

You really aren’t… Roltes thinks, but only sighs and accepts the offer. Now, he will need to cheat this man out of his money because he wasted too much of his time already.

 

They sit outside Ōsaka castle face to face with each other, above a table on two separate benches, with a popsicle each. Roltes chooses soda. The man chooses _matcha_.

He looks up at the castle.

“It’s my favourite,” he says. “If I were the one building it, I would have done it the exact same way. But it burned down a couple of times so the inside is modern. Such a pity.”

He is called Hideyoshi. Beauty, luck and joy, he tells him. The characters, _of course_. He is not a beauty, to be sure, but then beauty comes in so many ways. There is the beauty of the mind, he says. There is the beauty of appreciating the beauty in others. There is the beauty of making others laugh.

Roltes makes the second mistake when he tells him his real name. No, it is not true. It is not his real name. It is his favourite pseudonym. The name Organtino knows him by. (Sometimes when he slips up, he accidentally indulges in thinking about himself as this “Roltes” too.) The name that appears on the passport he entered this country with. (And today, he has a passport with him that has a different name and nationality written on that.) The name that appears on his most frequently used documents at home. The name he pretends to have a normal life with.

“I come here to study a lot,” Hideyoshi says. “Under the shades, where you can’t see the skyscrapers from - you can pretend you are in a different time.”

He is a historian. Graduate. It does not sound like the sort of person Roltes can make money from. They finish the ice-cream and he wipes the watery thing off the corner of his mouth with a single motion. He stares at Roltes for a while, tasting the words on his tongue before he would say anything. Then, he stands up from the bench, ready to go.

“If you’re not a tourist – and you’re definitely not a tourist, I will see you again.”

“Just like that?” Roltes asks, thinking about all the money he could have made this time. (He got himself a single popsicle.)

“Well… you already know where to find me.”

 

He later meets him outside Ōsaka castle in the shade. (Hideyoshi was right, he knew he would not leave it at that. He knew Roltes would come back to this exact place to look for him – but he has no idea how.) Now, he has ambition. Even if the end result would not yield more than the few thousand yen he found in Hideyoshi’s wallet the other day.

With the mistakes he has already made, he wonders about what drives him. Can it be that he just wants to learn more about this man without the prospect of cheating him out of his wealth? Can it be spite? Pride?

He is lying on the grass with a small, white-covered book next to him. The kanji for “Nobunaga.” He is a historian, of course. He studies the middle ages. Roltes did not forget what he told him about himself: he always remembers the things he can use against his targets later. For the money, he became whoever he needed to be. But a con man was hardly ever kind in real life. He exhausted his gentle and charming manners on people he aimed to cheat. So now, he listens to Hideyoshi like he truly wants to be his friend and doesn’t just try to get close to him with a bunch of ulterior motives.

“I write plays, sometimes. _Nō_ theatre.”

“You’re a writer, then?”

“No, not really. To tell the truth, they aren’t very good.” Roltes is sitting in the grass next to him and because Hideyoshi is looking somewhere else, he is free to survey his expression.

He looks young but old at the same time: some lines are deep on his face, but his eyes remain youthful. Roltes wonders how old he could be. His hair sprawls everywhere on the ground, and his shirt is slightly tucked out, revealing the sun-kissed skin. (It is rare for anyone in this country to be so careless about tanning and yet, he seems not to care.)

“What is the point in writing if you don’t think your writing is good?”

“Mm. People write for many reasons, Roltes. Literature is funny because you look at these old classics we now hold up as something brilliant and think: hell! This guy couldn’t really write, could he. Well, I see how that could be embarrassing. But for me? I don’t want to do anything with them. It’s self-fulfilment. They are all about a guy who is my namesake… making his way through the Warring States.”

Suddenly, he turns his head and stares straight into Roltes’s eyes.

“You made yourself the hero of your historical plays?”

“I told you. It’s self-fulfilment. It’s like masturbation… Except, it is much less vulgar when you’re caught doing it in public.”

For a second, Roltes almost understands why he pursued this man. In a way, he pretends to be your average citizen. Then, there is also something more open, mischievous about him. Hideyoshi sits up and flashes a smile at him, with an open mouth. He is not pretty. No, definitely not pretty at all.

“I never really wanted to end up like this,” he says, pointing at the book. “Then I fell in love.”

He uses the exact words in Japanese. He does not soften his words by saying “like” or the childish, foolish version of “love.” He claims to fall into serious, adult, mature love. His professor must be a genius, Roltes thinks.

“With?”

Hideyoshi points at the book.

“With this guy, Oda Nobunaga.”

Before he would even realize, Roltes starts laughing. There is something adorable in his honesty, in the way how he uses his tone to erase the vulnerability in his statement and pretend that it is more than natural. His hair goes down to his shoulders until he picks the hairband up from the ground and ties it up once again.

“Too bad he’s long dead, then.”

“I know!” He bites on his lower lip. “Now you understand what all these plays are for. The easiest way to bring someone back to life… No. Not even that. To transport yourself back to somewhere you do not belong. You want a popsicle?”

 

The fourth mistake he makes is ending up telling him that he lives in Kobe. He wonders if it is truly carelessness, or something entirely different.

 

Organtino comes to his flat in the evening and asks him about his day, without expecting to hear much from him, to begin with. Roltes does his very best and at least forces half an answer out of himself. (He is always wary not to talk about his excursions when it is about money. Organtino cannot possibly know what he does.) There is no harm in telling him that he visited Ōsaka castle, however.

“You are settling in!” Organtino exclaims. “See? You went sightseeing!”

Roltes does not really want to tell him that he went to meet a man and pretend to care about his love affair with Oda Nobunaga in order to get into his bank account. Hideyoshi receives a scholarship from the government every month. It would not be entirely foolish to try and get hold of _that_ , he decided.

“We should go together, next time.”

Well, surely not to Ōsaka castle, he thinks to himself. He already made enough mistakes: the last one he is about to make is to introduce a target to Organtino rendering all of his efforts completely useless. If they went, they would surely need to avoid it at the times when it was easy to just lie out on the lawn and enjoy the warmth. Given that they are well into the end of April; he would need to procrastinate this for long months.

Organtino sleeps in his bed and places soft, soft kisses all over his face. (It is okay because nobody could see them now.)

“You taste like soda ice cream,” he mentions.

Roltes shuts him up.

Organtino stays until the morning and he wonders how suspicious it looks that a volunteer sometimes spends his nights outside his assigned dorm, but Roltes couldn’t care less. His friend is playing with his hair.

“You should come down to the church on Friday,” he says. “We have an international program, it sounds very nice. Free food.”

“ _Free food_.”

“I know you wouldn’t come for Christianity. And you probably wouldn’t come for me.”

Truth to be told, Roltes was more likely to come for Organtino in any scenario than for the food, whatsoever. He already decides to pay a visit just for Organtino’s beautiful pair of brown eyes and the way they sparkle at him.

“Who knows… You might even have fun!”

But it is not fun he has on Friday at the church. Organtino is very happy to see him, fashionably late, looking like someone who really doesn’t want to be here. He grabs him by the hand (not good, people can see) and drags him into the crowd, towards the free food.

Roltes’s heart almost skips a beat when he recognizes the now overly familiar, black curls, with the single light streak in them among the crowd, now outside the context of the Ōsaka castle’s lawn.

 

Hideyoshi looks them up and down and clearly takes note of Organtino’s hand holding onto his. As soon as he notices the line of sight, he practically rips his hand out of his friend’s. It is too late, Hideyoshi saw it anyway. He silently laughs and Roltes feels judged.

“He is cute,” he tells Roltes later outside the church, where he goes to steal a smoke. The man follows him. There is something he needs to ask.

Roltes presses his lips together and stares down on the ground. He came here to ask Hideyoshi how on earth he ended up right in this obscure event at an obscure town’s even more obscure district, but the man is quicker than him. Then, he forces a neutral expression on himself.

“He is not the only one,” he thinks.

“Hm. I do not take you for a narcissist, but I also take you for someone who has eyes, you see.” Hideyoshi points at himself. “The last person who called me cute was my own mother and then she likened me to cute animals… But of course, you may be talking about my personality.”

Roltes stays silent because his opinion is unwanted.

“You know, if Nobunaga was alive, he’d probably call me ‘Monkey’ or something like that,” Hideyoshi tells him, with much conviction. “He wouldn’t be the first one, though.”

“They call you Monkey?”

Hideyoshi looks at him with some sense of accusation in his dark eyes: as if you do not know! As if you couldn’t see it too… It is not that the look would be sad, it simply does not allow for Roltes to feign innocence.

He lights the cigarette.

“That is bad for your skin.” And your health, he adds in his head, after realizing that he started off with the least of their priorities. Hideyoshi is not really amused, he points at his face.

“ _Yeah,_ well something will need to take the blame for this.” He steals a drag from him, which makes him look even more unimpressed. “It is about being in control of your flaws. You are a man who likes to be in control, aren’t you?”

Roltes keeps a straight face. This man won’t just read him like this!

“Yes, you are,” Hideyoshi purrs, lighting another cigarette for himself, upon realizing that the other would never give it back to him. “So you understand that once you reclaimed your flaws, it is harder for anyone to hurt you with them. You are a handsome man, what you need to reclaim could easily become your sex-appeal. And for me? I have my charm. That can get you a long way, you would be surprised.”

He tucks a loose lock behind his ear as he says that, smiling up at Roltes. Hideyoshi is considerably shorter than him, so he has to slightly look up when he wants to blow the smoke into the man’s face. His smile turns into a smirk, but before he could say anything, Organtino finds them.

“Oh! Roltes! You’re socializing?” he asks, but he seems pleasantly surprised.

“Why, he is very social,” Hideyoshi claims and Roltes dies inside. No, not as far as Organtino knows.

Organtino snatches the cigarette out of his hand and gives him a pointed look before putting it out on the ground. Sure. Perfect. The only thing he needed is Organtino to domineer him in front of someone who was never supposed to meet him.

“And he is kept on a tight leash too,” the man adds with an entertained giggle. “And the beautiful young man with the golden hair is…?”

“Organtino. My friend.” They shake hands and it is a contest over who could bow lower. Hideyoshi lets him win.

“I wonder if you are allowed to have more friends,” he tells Organtino.

Who blushes. Who _blushes_! Roltes wants to either roll his eyes or walk out on the scene.

“The point of this event is to make more friends,” his friend tries to save himself. “And to teach about Christianity.”

“That’s perfect. That is why I am here,” Hideyoshi admits. “My old flame was quite into Christianity for a while, so I want to do my research too.”

Roltes finally rolls his eyes. Hideyoshi ends up stealing Organtino for the remainder of the evening. They talk about history, religion, poetry, theatre… He awkwardly stands in the corner and somewhat jealously stares at them, watching the way Hideyoshi edges closer and closer to Organtino as time passes, not taking his eyes off of his lips and face for a single second.

 

He misses the last train back to Ōsaka and Organtino generously offers that he could sleep in Roltes’s bed tonight. So it is happening.

“My flat is on top of a hill,” Roltes says because he does not want to sound too eager. “If you make it, you may stay.”

As soon as Organtino sees them off and says goodnight, he pushes him up against a wall at their first convenience. It is the high, bricked fence of a high-school that is only a few corners away from the church. Hideyoshi accepts the situation with a bit too much integrity.

“How did you find me?”

He does not seem to be frightened of him. If anything, he finds the situation half amusing, half exciting. He stares at Roltes’s lips.

“Why, are you trying to hide something?” he asks. He must know. If he did not know before, now Roltes has revealed himself with this little hissy fit. “Please. Kobe is a fish tank. The international community is so interconnected, if I know one person, I could get to anyone. You might be secretive, but your little friend seems to love to brag about you…”

Organtino, of course. If only he did not tell his “real” name to Hideyoshi and where he lived, he would not need to deal with any of this now. The man slips out, under his arm and starts walking up the hill without missing a heartbeat or seeming too threatened.

“My _little friend_ you seem to like very much.”

“Do you mind?” He turns back so they can face each other, and walks backwards, sending a smile towards him. The scarce lighting of the street gives his hair an orange glow. “I like you. I find that I like him too. But you are unlikely friends, so different from one another. I cannot help but wonder, what it would be like if I could insert myself between you two.”

Roltes wonders, too. He also wonders how it would look like if he tried to mercilessly swindle Organtino’s soon to be dear friend out of his monthly scholarship. Maybe he could wait until their trip ends and take everything on the very last day. As a memorable farewell.

That would leave a great impression on him. (He would probably even like it, the weird sort of man he is.)

They somehow end up in his apartment without Roltes trying to suffocate Hideyoshi to death. He kicks his shoes off at the door and then aims for Roltes’s bed immediately.

By the time he gets back from the shared kitchen with the hot chocolate Hideyoshi ordered – and he is being the nice, unassuming friendly man now, who surely does not want anyone’s scholarship money, and definitely did not just push them up against a red brick wall – he has already fallen asleep. Roltes tucks him in and drinks the chocolate himself, before rolling out another blanket and spending his night in a futon on the floor.

It is incredible, how accommodating he could be if it is about money. Otherwise, he would never allow this to happen. The sad thing is that he can only force feelings out of himself when it is about winning something out of it, he thinks. Every now and then he can see the tragedy in that. He can see the flaw in his character.

(He is brilliant. He is an actor, he will be whoever he needs to be. His love is the envy of many but it is never real. He only puts on a show when he wants to. He only forces all these cheesy roles on himself. But that is not how he is in private.)

Hideyoshi wakes up before six in the morning and Roltes is up the very same second, without letting the man know. He thinks he would leave for the (by far not) first train without even saying goodbye, but instead, he makes them breakfast. And coffee. The door creaks open for a second time, to Roltes’s biggest surprise and the smell of coffee and eggs immediately reach his nose.

Roltes pretends that he only wakes up but Hideyoshi probably knows the truth. He flashes a smile at Roltes and they eat at the small table, kneeling on the ground. Then, they smoke inside the bedroom, with their backs to Roltes’s bed.

“You know, I really need to take a shower, brush my teeth and make it to my lecture,” Hideyoshi says suddenly as if he only remembered his responsibilities. “But I would also hate to break the spell.”

“Well… Now you know where to find me.”

He slips back into his stupid boots (who wears boots at the end of April anyway?) that make him look slightly taller and arranges his shirt. He gives a look to Roltes.

“I will certainly come back to see your blond friend. Those golden locks? Very cute.”

 

Very cute, so incredibly cute… Roltes loses count the next time they are in his apartment and Hideyoshi talks to (and about) his friend. He brought a big bottle of rice wine for them, and miraculously both agreed to share. (Roltes does not like to be under the influence of alcohol, it often interferes with his plans. He needs to be able to think clearly at all times. But then, Hideyoshi is clearly an outlying example. He can put off cheating him until the very last day he is here.)

Somehow the two of them, Organtino and Hideyoshi find the same tone immediately. Hideyoshi knows all Organtino’s favourite shows and he never fails to compliment his Japanese at the right times. It reminds Roltes a lot of himself when he is trying to lure a target in, being just witty and friendly enough to catch someone’s attention. When they need that… Of course, there are some people who like to be insulted every now and then. But he never shows them his true face. That would be a step too far. Organtino asks him about his major, and suddenly his face lights up with the most genuine, infatuated smile Roltes has ever seen.

“Do you know Oda Nobunaga?” he asks.

“Of course,” Organtino answers immediately, “Roltes is a big fan.”

That is an eyebrow-riser. Hideyoshi gives him a surprised look, but his grin only gets wider.

“That’s not…”

“It’s true. It is not often he would take interest in anyone, so trust me when I say, it was a surprise for me too. Japanese was our minor at university, and he seemed to only ever get excited about Nobunaga.”

“You never told me that,” Hideyoshi teases him, and fills his glass with sake again. “I am not mad… I would be happy to share.”

Later as the evening progresses and the alcohol disappears, he would bury his fingers in Organtino’s hair and talk to him about golden tearooms (which would never, still, compare to his locks) and whimsical tea masters. Organtino’s face flushes red and soon, he would reciprocate. Roltes feels like he does not even belong in the room anymore. He has a bad feeling about this because he has never seen Organtino such a way before – and they spent their entire youth together.

Well, the man certainly is an outlier for both of them…

Hideyoshi lets his fingers slide down on the man’s throat, drawing small circles all around his neck, and then his thumb finds its way back to his lips. Organtino closes his eyes.

“You are _so_ cute…” Hideyoshi whimpers, probably not realizing that he says the words out loud again, this time. Organtino melts into his touch. “I normally would not try to push my limits this way, but I am rather tipsy and you are very beautiful tonight. I am wondering if it would be fine to kiss you?”

Normally wouldn’t push his limits! What a laugh. Roltes wants to tell him that anyone would see through his cheesy little plan – everyone knows that Hideyoshi is not half as affected by the alcohol as he pretends to be. He is just using this as a pretext for his little excursion. But he has no time to shed light on this, as Organtino makes a sound of agreement (at least that is what it sounds like from the outside) and Hideyoshi closes the gap between their lips.

His eyes are open for a while and he turns Organtino a bit, so he can stare straight into Roltes’s eyes. Something is quite clearly pulling at his lower stomach, but he cannot decide whether it’s jealousy or desire.

Hideyoshi leaves before the last train and Organtino continues the night by kissing Roltes – and then feeling guilty and confused about the night before in the morning.

“I don’t know what I thought,” he says. “I did not want to leave you out. It was unfair, I am sorry.”

“It’s not that I wanted to join,” Roltes lies with a groan and makes him drink some water. “It is not that Hideyoshi is so attractive I would want to have my share.”

His head hurts from all the sake and he is very much aware of the fact that he is a filthy little liar.

“I think his eyes are beautiful,” Organtino says. “And he would fit well in your arms.”

“Mhm,” Roltes thinks, and pretends that it is a sound of disagreement.

 

Hideyoshi apologizes the next time they meet, under the shades of the castle’s trees. It is unsure how truly remorseful he is about the situation, but he buys a popsicle for Roltes again, in order to mend his heart. He knew the consequences of this situation way before he started it, of course. Roltes wonders if he ever seduces foreigners the same way, or this was a new scheme he made up, just for Organtino’s case.

He really seems to like the man, you see, there is no doubt over that. And truth to be told. Organtino is a charming, pretty young man, there is nothing to be surprised about.

“I was overstepping my boundaries, I am sorry,” he tells him, biting down on the ice cream. “It is just that I was so tipsy and your friend was so tempting. The wine overrode my rational thinking, and besides, I was expecting refusal.”

“No, you were not.” He is not going to play the innocent! Not in front of Roltes.

“Hm?”

“You knew exactly where this night was leading. You think I cannot recognize a well-executed plan when I can see one? You set it up just so you could kiss Organtino.” It is true. With all the compliments and the purposeful drinking, it could not have been anything else. Roltes wasn’t born yesterday.

“Maybe… Maybe that’s true. In any case, does that bother you, I wonder?” What, the fact that you kissed my friend? Roltes thinks. Or the fact that you didn’t kiss me. “I want to be friends. I would hate it if this little mishap undermined our relationship.”

He is unsure what to answer. The past month or so, he found himself coming to Ōsaka a little more frequently than he could have justified. Each time his job allowed, he would come here. He met Mai, of course, and Kaoru – but even a fool would see that they are only an excuse to keep visiting here. None of them looks remotely rich enough and Kaoru does not seem to be half as infatuated as she would need to be.

Of course, because Roltes is very much neglecting his own charm in favour of someone else. An ugly little monkey with a weird sense of humour and a loud mouth, that is. The second time they met, he talked about masturbation in public and it only got worse from there.

For example, now he wants to be friends.

“I see how my interest in your friend would be a problem,” he says. “But you’re a real nice guy. I would hate it if we had any hard feelings between us because of this. And besides, I would like to be better friends. I really enjoy spending time together.”

That’s it. He will surely steal all his scholarship money _and_ anything he has saved up in his account. Of all people, the unattractive, tiny, flimsy man has the nerve to refuse him like this!

“Or… do you feel dissatisfied?” Hideyoshi asks. He stares down at the table in front of him and tries to gather some presence.

Of course he feels dissatisfied. It has never happened to him that he made an effort to be nice and charming and other people met it with seducing Organtino and generously offering to remain friends. (And it is not that he would have even made some serious steps!) Why must Hideyoshi be like this?

“Friends,” he repeats instead of answering, tasting the word on his tongue.

Well, that is a start, too. It could also be a finish. As long as he gains Hideyoshi’s trust by the end of this year, he will have everything he needs. If he needs to sleep with Organtino in order to do so and play at making him jealous… well, let him have his stupid fun! They seemed to be enjoying themselves the other night, and he will enjoy the scholarship money when he gets to blow it away later (just to spite him)!

Hideyoshi shines a smile at him.

“Friends, that’s right,” he agrees. “But I can’t promise I won’t kiss your friend the next time he is acting cute.”

Roltes makes a face. It is not often that other people would have enough on him to be able to tease. He forces a fake smile on himself.

“As long as he agrees.”

Hideyoshi laughs at him and he cannot believe that he was forced to negotiate their friendship as if the man had the upper hand and not him. In a normal situation, he would have never let this happen.

“Come. I want to show you something,” Hideyoshi beckons him and he follows immediately.

Friends, then, he thinks… If that is what Hideyoshi needs, he will be more than happy to give it to him.

 

And being friends is less of a challenge than he would have initially thought it to be. See, he never really did friends before. More precisely, he only did one friend.

That friend being Organtino. They went to the same high school and then to the same university. He never needed anyone else. And he still distinctly remembers the day when he finally asked him, after months of mute and awkward fighting over hand-holding and intimate touches:

“For once and all now… Why do you keep wanting to hold my hand?”

Instead of bothering with an answer, Organtino buried his hands in his hair and kissed him deep on the mouth – and Roltes never asked about it again.

So in a sense, in every sense, having a friend is new. Even if it is only for the sake of cheating money out of him. The only person he ever interacted with as a friend was Organtino – but the basis of their relationship was vastly different.

Hideyoshi takes him to old, European-style cafés sometimes, with expensive-looking chinaware and pricey cake sets. These places always show their age but there is something charming about them, Hideyoshi tells him. They often have few seats and cute, old ladies serving them coffee with a little biscuit on the side. He smokes until his face almost disappears in the thick grey puff and somehow in the dim light of the cafés, behind closed curtains, it makes a perfect impression. Roltes always feels like that these times, he is farther away than ever, and if he only extended his arm towards him, he would not be able to feel the flesh under his hand.

But Hideyoshi takes Organtino out too. To real dates. He would pay for his dinner and buy him wine, and then beg Roltes to allow him to take him up to _his_ flat.

“Going to the convent would be plain wrong,” they argue. And Hideyoshi’s house is apparently too far away.

So he is chased out of his very own house. When it is late and Organtino cannot be bothered to walk home anymore, he spends the night with him. With his hand on Roltes’s chest, he falls asleep, nuzzling up to him.

“Do you find it weird?” he asks once.

“Frankly? A bit.”

“I never met a man like Hideyoshi before,” Organtino admits. “I never felt the things I feel with him.”

Roltes gets a bit jealous but his friend only laughs at him and sneaks a kiss on his lips. Ever since he started going out (or whatever) with Hideyoshi, he holds him closer at night, he sometimes even kisses his face when they are in private.

“You are so silly!” There is something else Organtino seemingly wants to say but he changes his mind before any sound could leave his mouth and leaves the thing unsaid.

They would also spend time together as a three, often. Mostly it would be Hideyoshi visiting them with a bottle of rice wine and an interesting topic to discuss. It never happens again that he would “lose control” and kiss Organtino again, which is how Roltes understands how truly staged the entire event was. It is not that he could blame Hideyoshi for it: and besides, he might have had succumbed to it because he knew he had no other choice if he wanted to make the first step.

 

And then, other times Hideyoshi would pull stuff like inviting _him_ to theatre in the very last minute. He calls him on his black flip phone – Roltes has two, on two different names. The one for the targets is the very same model in blue, and the one for the man named “Roltes” who holds a working visa in this country is the black one. That is the personal number. He stopped counting mistakes a long while ago, but this would be probably around the tenth.

So, he calls Roltes on his black flip phone and asks him if he is free in the evening. That is how he ends up watching kabuki for the first time from cheap seats, without opera glasses. (He is sometimes allowed to borrow Hideyoshi’s one when he is generous enough – “it is your first time, after all,” he whispers.)

He wants to ask him, how come he did not invite Organtino along, but then he remembers, there was not a single time when he ever required the man to travel up to Ōsaka just for him. Somehow it was always Hideyoshi who ended up visiting. Roltes even kept wondering for a while whether there was a reason for this – or he simply did not want to inconvenience the man by making him pay for the train ticket. On the contrary, Roltes would almost always come up to visit.

It was true, in any case, that there were much more things to do in Ōsaka, and the fun Kobe offered was often limited and one-sided. They somehow still never tire of it.

“There is just something excessively exciting in men dressing up as women,” Hideyoshi later says over a large cup of latte and a menthol cigarette, “and women dressing up as men. Don’t you feel so?”

Roltes does not remember having a weak spot for any of the mentioned scenarios. He looked at the kabuki play the same way as he would have looked at a play with mixed genders. The same analytic eye. And additionally, a rather frantic approach to try and understand the speech with so heavy classical undertones. He would never admit that of course.

“The dichotomy is inherently more seductive than the ordinary setting, you know,” Hideyoshi continues. “I would much rather be seduced by a woman in a pinstripe suit and fake moustache than a man dressed the same. And would much rather woo a man in a kimono, blushing under his white makeup and with beautiful ornaments in his hair than a woman, looking the same.”

“Have you ever seduced a kabuki actor?” Roltes asks, out of pure curiosity.

With this face? He wonders, but he does not say it. Hideyoshi seduced Organtino with the very same face, as they all know.

“Did you know? Kabuki actors in the seventeenth century used to also work as some kind of prostitutes, for those patrons who could afford them.” Hideyoshi blows the smoke in his face and he frowns in response. “And they were _incredibly_ popular. Would you seduce a kabuki actor, Roltes?”

It is not a straight answer, but information enough, Roltes decides. 

“I can’t see why,” Roltes thinks. “If I want a woman, I will pursue a woman. If I want a man, I will pursue a man. Why would I want to fool myself?”

“But say, you want a man dressed up as a woman, you do not want a _woman_. You still want a man, even though you want him in clothes society deems to be too feminine for anyone other than a woman to wear. There is no fooling anywhere.” Hideyoshi stares at him for a while. “But then, I suppose, you never pursue people because you want them, isn’t that right, Roltes? You are the man dressed up as a man scenario.”

Roltes coughs into his Americano.

“So why Organtino?” he asks instead, pretending that Hideyoshi’s comment never happened. The man stares at him for a while, trying to read his face. Maybe he will adjust his answer in a way Roltes would like it, he thinks. So he adds. “He is certainly not something you say you are looking for.”

“Why him? Surely, he is not a man in a woman’s attire. But he is soft, he is kind… and oh! He is so lovely.” He gives him a look that says: but you know this, Roltes. “And I think, he is not someone you can have closed away in a darkened room, you know, hiding behind curtains. He deserves to be taken out, to be paraded around for everyone to see.”

Hideyoshi stares into his coffee and lights another cigarette immediately. He continues in a slightly more resigned tone.

“In this country, you cannot really do that, of course. But to our own limits… I enjoy parading him. I really enjoy _him_ , you know. And he enjoys it too.”

 

Getting on friendly terms progresses gradually, and more importantly _well_ during the following months of the summer. Organtino and Hideyoshi still seem to hit it off and Roltes successfully manages to finish off his business with Mai (after getting what he wanted from her parents, of course). He dropped Kaoru in the meanwhile but quickly replaced her with another girl, Rina.

Rina is much clingier than the previous ones were which is a good sign. So, he invites another girl, Natsuki to the fireworks around Jūsō. It is something young couples love doing. Dressing up in yukata, buying delicious street food and finding a nice spot to sit around, while waiting for the actual event. He already has Rina wrapped around his little finger, so he should branch out for someone else, he thinks.

She is excited, of course, and he never felt bad about lying to anyone about his affections before. The girl thinks Roltes will look incredibly handsome in yukata, and she plans the colours they should wear to match. It is all worth it and the more enthusiastic she is, the quicker he will be able to see the fruits of his efforts, he thinks.

That is, until Organtino does not reveal the fact, that for one single time in their life, Hideyoshi invited him to Ōsaka. To watch the most beautiful firework event of the summer. In Jūsō. Now, there are enough people in there for the two couples never to meet. He could just target the other side of the river, the less popular destination, and they would never be found out. But no, because Organtino has to complicate this even further.

“You should come too, Roltes,” he invites him. “Hideyoshi thinks so too. I don’t know if he asked you yet.”

“I don’t know,” Roltes answers, instead of outright refusing it.

The fireworks would have been his easiest way to completely win the girl over. On the last day before the fireworks, he calls her and suggests meeting up at Umeda station. He never shows up and goes to Jūsō from Nishinomiya with his friends instead.

Organtino previously begged Hideyoshi to wear his yukata, so Roltes is the only one who comes in western clothes. It only feels right.

Organtino, on the other hand, looks beautiful in a yukata and they both think so. Hideyoshi buys him a big, red, glazed apple at one of the food stands, which somehow seems to complete the look. Hideyoshi and Roltes buy some squid to share and then they find a nice place on top of the small hill. They have a blanket with them to comfortably sit on.

With Organtino in the middle, they are ready to spend at least two hours, waiting for the fireworks to start. And they are by no means early: at the highest point of the hill, most of the nicest places are already gone. There is a ridiculous amount of people here – if not outright frightening. The three of them alternate between each other, choosing who is walking down to the food stands to buy new snacks as they are waiting. Hideyoshi chain smokes, and when Roltes joins in, Organtino tries to scold both of them. (It is not working.) When he is gone to buy some candy floss, Roltes turns to Hideyoshi.

“Why did you invite me along? I must be in the way.” Hideyoshi smiles at him, almost as if he was pitying him. Or if he thought Roltes was nothing more than an adorable puppy. This annoys him.

“In the way? Roltes.” He softly strokes his upper arm. “You are the best of friends we both could imagine – I don’t think it is far-fetched that we would want you to tag along.”

The best friend, of course. He wonders why it sounds so condescending and why his chest wrenches in a funny way each time he hears it. Then, Hideyoshi lowers his voice, leaning closer to the man so the people around him would not be able to hear what he is saying.

“And if you mean that you are _in the way_ … Well, you know there is nothing we could do in public anyway.”

When the fireworks start, Organtino holds both of their hands in the now dark venue and Roltes allows himself to softly rub circles into his palm. When he looks behind himself for a second, he catches Hideyoshi’s eyes.

 

He’s never been to Hideyoshi’s house until September. Half a year of their acquaintance – half of what they were destined to have altogether, and the man never had him over. Even worse, he never invited Organtino either. They only wind up at the man’s flat because the last train back to Kobe is gone after they somehow decided to sit into a smoky bar somewhere in the northern part of the city, picking out the most interesting looking cocktails, one after another.

Hideyoshi walks him to his apartment. A flat, almost smaller even than the one in the share-house Roltes rents. A small kitchen, a tube-like living room and a modest bedroom. The walls are covered with assorted calligraphy (Roltes wonders if it is his own work – they do not seem to be too special, but they aren’t exactly ugly either), and there are pieces of different tea sets everywhere: cups with golden lining, some entirely golden, and with various, kitsch patterns.

“Sure, you are not being serious with this,” Roltes murmurs, picking up one of them from the coffee table next to the sofa.

“Why?” Hideyoshi asks.

He looks at him. Truly, who wears these silky shirts and the weird bracelets unironically – who pierces his left ear just to have a small, sparkly, golden earring in it at all times, surely would honestly like these cups as well.

“I’ll brew you some tea. They taste much better from these, trust me.”

While he does that, Roltes wanders into the bedroom to look around. It is practically not a bedroom, but a shrine. A shrine to Oda Nobunaga himself. In a way, he finds it extremely adorable. It is like looking into the only weakness Hideyoshi has, his one true passion.

“Honestly?” he asks, in a rather mocking manner, when Hideyoshi appears behind him and offers him the cup. He is standing so close that Roltes thinks for a second that he would emerge on tiptoes and put his chin against his shoulder. It doesn’t happen. “You can sleep like this?”

“It is very stimulating, you know. I make up stories in bed before falling asleep, you see.”

“Oh, you do?”

“I do.” He steps next to him with a smile is full of mischief as he looks up at Roltes from below.

“Of what?”

“Of how I would seduce my lord Nobunaga, of course.” He sways a little, almost as if he was dancing – and it seems like the grin is permanent on his lips. “Do you want to hear? We have all night now, come sit on the sofa and I will tell you.”

It is not that Roltes would want to hear it that much but at the same time, he was always wondering about how Hideyoshi’s mind worked. It is not that the man would be so unwilling to share himself, but it seemed like that with each detail he gave, he became harder and harder to understand. Hideyoshi crosses his legs on the sofa, and sips from his tea, only to put it away on the table permanently.

“I would want to work my way up from the very bottom, you know. I would be a man with close to no title… An orphan. Almost peasant. I would serve the enemy for a few years when I am a young boy.”

“Why?”

“So I can hear of the greatness of the lord Nobunaga from a negatively biased stance and have my curiosity drive me to him. From afar, I would admire him, I would see the genius behind the appearance of the fool and I’d long to serve him and seek him out, seek his castle out, looking for employment. I would become his sandal-bearer. A turncoat for my old master. But following my heart, stepping on the same path as my beautiful master chose. Then slowly, I would show him what extraordinary things I am capable of.”

“How extraordinarily you can _clean his shoes_?” Hideyoshi gives him a look, but Roltes only smiles.

“I would be promoted at the castle only first. From sandal-bearer to the stables. From stables to the kitchen. From there, I could easily get into conversation with him. Advise him on the things I hear his retainers worry about. You can catch so many things in the stables or the kitchen, you see. I only need to talk to him once, and he would see my brilliance immediately. I would be unmatched.”

“And Nobunaga, he likes bold men. If you find him in a good mood that one time, he will confide in you later,” Roltes finishes the thought, guessing how Hideyoshi would continue.

“Exactly. He will soon have me as a foot soldier. A mounted soldier. He will soon ask for my advice when everything seems to fail. You see, I am versatile. I am smart, witty and I will take him at his best the same as I take him at his worst. There is nothing better than a retainer who knows when to stay silent and when to flatter you. There is nothing better than a retainer who will offer his advice and his loyalty to follow you whatever you choose – but have the courage to tell you when your plot seems to fail. And besides. I am an orphan: apart from my lord, I have nowhere else I could offer up my loyalties.”

“So… This is all about loyalty, so far. Loyalty in itself will not seduce Nobunaga,” Roltes thinks. “Otherwise, great number of his retainers already seduced him, only by existing.”

 

“But I will be around him, as one of his most trusted, you know,” he continues. Suddenly he stands up, stepping behind Roltes, with both hands on his shoulders, strongly rubbing them. He leans close to Roltes’s ear as he does it. “Serve him when he is tired of all his battles. Compliment him on the campaign. Listen to his worries.”

“And what if he wants you away, Monkey?”

Hideyoshi stops his hand but leaves it on him, his skin warming the man’s back. Roltes almost edges forward, so he could give more space to him, but he plays it off as simply putting his teacup on the coffee table as well.

“When he wants to have his time alone, I leave.” His finger starts drawing circles on his back, almost absent-mindedly. Or Roltes assumes so. “But you know, the good thing about great men? Nobody understands them. Only those who went through the same transformation will ever be able to give him his peace of mind. So he will eventually seek out the ones most alike him. Having followed him to battles, from the lowest to the highest position, I am the one who has seen him at his best – and at his worst.”

He sits back next to Roltes, who is not impressed.

“And then?” he asks. “Brotherhood is not seduction.”

“And then it is all about the little gestures. I could kneel down, once, remind him of the man I used to be, wiping dust at his feet. Stand up for a bit.” He does as Hideyoshi asks him, who kneels at his feet immediately. “I’d say: do you remember, my lord, when I used to serve you on my knees? Those times suddenly came to mind. And then… I would look up at him, like this.”

He ghosts his fingers over Roltes’s toes, looking up at him from below. There is something darker in his gaze than ever. They lock eyes, for a second and there, Roltes swears that Nobunaga could read Hideyoshi’s mind. He keeps staring into his face, as if he wasn’t affected.

“Do you think that works?” Hideyoshi lowers his gaze to eye-level, biting down on his lip and then he looks back at the man. He swallows. Thickly.

“Well, my lord Nobunaga is a man… He is a violent, passionate man, who has a taste for all sort of queer things and insatiable hunger. Surely, his interest would be at least superficially piqued.”

“Stop fooling around, Monkey,” Roltes tells him, but pats his head as if he was truly nothing more but a pet he kept around. “You’ve been kneeling for long enough. You had your share now.”

Hideyoshi brightens up. Only then Roltes realizes that his words might have sounded like they came straight from how he imagined the lord Nobunaga: even though he only wanted the man to do a reality-check. Hideyoshi’s hands slide up on the side of his legs, gently forcing him to sit back down. The look he gives him regrettably makes his heart beat faster.

“But my lord,” he purrs. “It is no trouble. I am merely grateful for the path we shared until now. But you seem tired, and you had one too many of a drink: it is truly inexcusable if I inconvenienced you with my foolish words.”

“You truly do not know when to stop, do you?” This is still not Nobunaga, but he regrettably becomes him the exact moment Hideyoshi refuses to get up from his knees.

The exact moment Hideyoshi takes his hand to his mouth, kissing his fingers. Even though Roltes knows that he should not involve himself in such self-indulgent games, Nobunaga throws his head back and enjoys the view this offers him.

“My lord showed me nothing but generosity and benevolence with these hands,” he says and Roltes too finds it harder and harder to keep his cool.

The man only demonstrates what he would do to Nobunaga, surely, but it is completely unnecessary to act it out…

Otherwise, _otherwise_ …

“You forget your place,” Nobunaga and Roltes warn him at the same time, for different reasons, except their voice becomes hoarse, almost filled with distilled desire.

Hideyoshi forces his knees apart and with the flexibility of a cat, suddenly inserts himself into the man’s lap, their noses almost touching.

“I think I barely just found it,” he breathes.

Roltes does not remember who starts the kiss: they lean forward at the exact same second, their lips meeting in the hungriest of kisses. A wait of six months… A wait of four hundred years.


End file.
